Electronica
.
Superimpose
into relentless Kalashnikovs.
Tap your
feet to unyielding triggers
In the
haze of chillum smoke.
Trip on
killing.
Dream of
ruling.
Bachchhan Amitabh. That’s what coal-mafioso turned politician
Ramadheer Singh calls Indian cinema's angry young man turned officially
the most versatile range of products’ endorser, in a scene a few frames into the
second half of Gangs of Wasseypur-2; and unabashedly slams him and Salman Khan
for making the youth believe in the hero with only muscles and no brains. Cinema
or rather the cognizant lack of it, he claims, has what made him what he is—the only man in
a town so full of daredevil boys who die older than Hendrix and Morrison,
but much younger than Dev Anand, the
evergreen hero all the women would dig when he was in school. Maybe Kashap’s a
big Bacchan fan and secretly admires Salman too—the latter earned his less
illustrious brother Abhinav, with Dabbang, at one go what Anurag hasn’t earned
from all his movies, in spite of all the Cannes romping that he gets to do with
arm-candy cum wife Kalki for his ‘world cinema'—for Kashyap takes copious liberties
to affect what my high school English teacher would call poetic justice at the
end of it all. Yes, at the end of it when Anuraag Kasyap and Zeeshan Quadri
finally decide to end their colourfully dark trip of self-indulgence.
Tum paas aayen,
Tum paas aayen
Yun
Muskurayen, Tum ne na jane kya kiya
Sapne dekhaye, Aabto mera dil
Jaane ka
sota hai, Kya karoon haye
Kuch kuch
hota hai.
And just in the next shot, the delicious Huma Quereshi croons to
her Bacchan worshiping husband—in her
even-more delicious Bihari accent—languishing in jail, exercising his hands to her amorous memory. To raise his spirits and libido, of course. And
who comes through eventually—the Bollywood batter or the Bollywood believer—is
again carefully camouflaged by a twist that seeks to maintain the best part of
this extended LSD trip viewed through the consciousness of heartland India—neutrality.
The impish hide and seek Kashyap indulges and to his credit, engages in is the
story within the story. And is perhaps one of those rare occasions, when the
sub-text is more gripping than the actual text itself.
Summer of
2012.
Syzygy.
De Sica,
Amitabh, Anurag.
Who’s
behind whom?
There’s
still time for it.
Apocalypse
that is.
Zeeshan Quadari is a good story-teller but he’s a young man who
has a lot to learn still. And the story, though gripping, is at all times set
for its predictable end by the virtue of it being a story that thrives on
revenge as the backbone and not as some
people would unfairly and high-handedly claim, its Bollywood affiliation. And after all it is the battle within the
battle we’re interested in—amidst
Wasseypur’s maddening gun-powder heavy power tussle and Hema Quereshi’s ( I
just can’t get over her) knee-weakening
moves, it’s Anurag Kashap’s personal battle that’s the most engrossing.
From Saharanpur’s small town sensibilities to Sica’s sleek storytelling shades,
here’s a man who’s seen and felt a lot. He’s tripped on stuff, which if my
mother ever came to know of, she’d forbid me from watching his cinema anymore.
On one hand, he’s trying to make ground breaking, epoch making and all that can
be made and broken cinema, and yet on the other, he is very Bollywood at heart.
Grown up on Bachchan, fed on Dev Anand’s eccentricities. The result—charming
chaos. Breaks and makes a lot of things. Stereotypes and your heart, at times
too.
Tiger on
the bed
Tiger in
the streets.
A blue
lungi.
With and
without.
Faizal Khan is Nawazuddin Siddiqui. Nawazuddin Siddiqui is Faizal Khan. Because, no could
else could possibly be either-- good with the gun in his hand and in his groin.
He’s in equal measure dedicated to his chillum as he is to his wife. He’s the
Bollywood hero. He’s the Bollywood villain. He’s believable. And more importantly, brutally brilliant.
Most of the one-fifty minutes of Gangs Of Wasseypur-2, Faizal Khan is as sure
about himself as an IITian would be of his calculus, but in a beautifully
crafted moment of vulnerability, when Huma
(yes, again her) playfully mocks him about his ageing looks. He tries hard to be that trigger happy hood
that he is, but being rebuffed, even though just good-humoredly, by the love of
his life brings out in him a rare moment of weakness that subtly stamps Kashyap’s
class and Siddiqui’s dexterity. All over again.
Bombs of
Benares
Detonating
in Wasseypur
Bombs of
passion and power
Bonbs of
jokes and japes
Bombs that
spill blood
Bombs that
sieve blood
Bombs of
truth
Bombs of time.
Bombs that
are not bombs at all.
As Marquez once said of his morbidly magnificent Hundred Years of
Solitude, there’s hardly anything very serious about the seemingly epic in
themselves characters of his story; he was merely making jibes at
eccentricities of people and places around him. Kashyap may or may not have
read Marquez, but he’s enjoying one hearty laugh just as Marquez must have had
when conjuring Macondo’s romantic geographical obscurity, when in the deftly
drafted murder of a certain important character, the murderer, before drilling
a magazine into him asks him (the character) an address in Varanasi. Varanasi, for the record, is Wasseypur in
Gangs of Wasseypur-2.
To begin I
need an inspiration
And some
madness.
To end is
but an art.
I need
sanity.
And
strength
To feel the
new life.
To achieve a climax that is climatic enough in a story that is
pulsating with climaxes of sub plots all the time sometimes means to shunt out
the crest and troughs of the plot altogether, and sadly and unknowingly let
drabness drip into a narrative so full of life just at its end and sadly shut
out on all the goodness of a story that was told so well for all its life.
Gangs of Wasseypur, though, is fortunately a story that ends well. The juxtaposition
of the bigger plot and the smaller plots is smooth. Sultan Quereshi is killed
in the wake of an almost funny albeit planned move. Revenge is played out
pompously. Not just Sardar Khan and Faizal Khan’s on Ramadheer Singh, but of Anurag
Kashyap’s and Zeeshan Quadri’s on their
cinematographic heroes and influences and at the same time contraints. Deewar
and The Bicyle Thief both win. Zeeshan
lets the world know, he’s in the man in control. As Definite, on screen and as a self-assured
writer who ends his magnum opus with a smug smirk, off it. Heartening, for
finally a writer gets to be the last man standing. Quite literally.
For those
gorgeous goggles,
That hide
what could kill.
For that sheepish
smile
That would
move a hill.
For those
colourful kaftans
That would
light up the dullest mill
For that
voice which sings
Frustriao
nahi, nervesou nahi.
For Huma Quereshi, of course--the bold and the beautiful . And
yes, the balance has been restored once again. She’s a Quereshi you see.
